From Boogaloos website…

Nominate the deserving woman you know for a makeover! If selected, nominee will win a fashion makeover and $250 allowance for clothing and accessories at Boogaloos Boutique along with a 25 percent discount on any item purchased the week of her reveal. In addition, nominee will win a hair and makeup makeover at SalonRed and Spa in downtown Decatur. Nominee will also win a reveal party hosted by Boogaloos Boutique on June 20, 2009. Special discounts at Boogaloos and SalonRed will be awarded to all party attendees.

Got someone in mind?  Fill out this application and drop it off at Boogaloos before June 6th.

h/t: Window Shopping

In case you can’t wait for the hard copy, the May Decatur Focus is now online.

As is often the case, the must-read section this month is Lyn’s “Focus on Downtown Development.”  This month she answers some of the most common questions heard from residents lately.

One of those questions addresses something we’ve been batting around here for months.

Q: Aren’t all of these multi-family developments generating a lot of children that will over-burden the school system?

A: Of the more than 600 new units built in downtown, fewer than six house children. [emphasis mine] More than 60 percent of the residents in these units are empty-nesters and the remaining 40 percent are primarily young professionals. Households with school-aged children are generally drawn to single family housing and Decatur hasn’t added a significant number of single family units since the development of the Sycamore Ridge subdivision in the early 1990s.

In 1970, national figures showed that 44 percent of all households had children and only 17 percent of them were singleperson households. In 2006, roughly 35 percent of American households had children while 26 percent were single-person households. In Decatur, only 25 percent of our households have school-aged children. Baby Boomers will continue to drive the housing market for the foreseeable future and they are opting for smaller housing units in an urban setting. We believe this will continue to support the condominium market, which provides signifi cant tax revenue for school operations without adding to the student population.

Wow.  Apparently the yard is as important a feature for Fido as it is for little Sally.

Click over to page 2 of The Focus to read the rest of Lyn’s FAQ.

Looks like reconfiguration has finally forced CSD to get serious about families who lie about their addresses – sometimes even falsifying documents – to get their children into Decatur’s school system.

Here’s a letter by Dr. Edwards that was sent out to select parents on March 30th.  The meatiest paragraphs follow…

For several years now, under my tenure, we have made efforts to implement residency procedures. Try as we might, we still have people that have resorted to lying about their address, falsifying documents or asking others to do so for them. You may have seen in the newspapers where some systems are actually taking legal action against people who perpetrate fraud of this type.

Right after spring break, your child’s school principal will be sending out communication asking for verification of residency. If you receive this type of letter, we ask you to understand why we have to ask you again to provide proof of residence. We will also be auditing the records randomly to see if we have missed some pertinent information.

Finally, there are some individuals whose residency has been in question for some time. I am directing the principals to send out notification to these families with the intent that the children be withdrawn and sent to their home schools. We will be providing enough time so that families can withdraw their children and get them settled into their new school for the next school year. We will be asking our attorneys to look closely at affidavits and leases provided in questionable circumstances.

While this certainly sucks for the kids caught in the middle, that’s not the school system’s fault or problem.  Parents should lead by example and play by the rules.

Special note to the AJC: Since this is something I could see you following up on, I’d just like to go on the record and point out that it was reported here first.  Thanks.

Atlantans are always complaining their city has no identity.

Many transplants just don’t look deep enough, while natives often find themselves pointing to events and places that were inevitably torn down between 1950-1980.  City historians and marketing gurus look to the skyline and see no Space Needle, Empire State Building or Sears Tower.  Apparently the post-modern BOA tower and the city’s dispersed,  skyline just doesn’t cut it.

So Atlanta continues on in its struggle to define itself with an unexciting skyline. And all the while the city’s defining characteristic sits not ON Peachtree Road, but one street over.  And miles beyond that.

Hilly terrain and dense tree canopy, hide the city’s lasting identity.  Its streetcar suburbs.

If the city wants to recapture its image, I would humbly suggest a greater focus on this truly unique resource.  And while returning the streetcar to some of its old haunts is the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel for now, we could all benefit from a little bit of “streetcar suburb” marketing.  Of course, its not easy to throw a “streetcar suburb” on the cover of a Hotlanta Magazine and say “Come visit our beautiful city!” without looking slightly ridiculous.  But a definitive book, documenting this diverse resource would be an excellent first step helping the city define itself.  Not just to the world, but to its own residents, old and new.

We don’t have an ocean or the Rocky Mountains to help us out.  We need to create our own identity.  And as we’ve already touched on, the skyline won’t be filling in anytime soon.  I say we go to Plan B.